P.C Mahalanobis

 

P.C. Mahalanobis is widely recognized in India as an esteemed Indian scientist and accomplished applied statistician. Within the realm of statistics, his most notable achievement was the development of the Mahalanobis Distance. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis is primarily remembered for his pioneering work in anthropometry and his notable role as a member of India's inaugural Planning Commission. His profound contributions include the establishment of the esteemed Indian Statistical Institute and his invaluable input in the design of expansive sample surveys. Mahalanobis, revered as the Father of statistics in India, also played a significant part in shaping the framework of large-scale sample surveys within the country.

Early life of P.C. Mahalanobis
Mahalanobis hailed from a distinguished Bengali Brahmin family belonging to the landed gentry of Bikrampur, Dhaka, in the Bengal Presidency (now in Bangladesh). His grandfather, Gurucharan, relocated to Calcutta in 1854 and established a successful business, commencing with a chemist shop in 1860. Influenced by Debendranath Tagore, the father of Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore, Gurucharan actively participated in social movements such as the Brahmo Samaj, serving as its treasurer and president. His residence at 210 Cornwallis Street served as the focal point for the Brahmo Samaj.

Major Contributions of Mahalanobis
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis has major contributions to not just one but several fields of education and society. The Mahalanobis distance holds a prominent position as a widely employed metric for assessing the divergence of a point from a distribution across multiple dimensions. Particularly valuable in the domains of cluster analysis and classification, this measure was first introduced by Mahalanobis in 1930 within the context of his study on racial resemblances. The inception of this research can be traced back to a fortuitous encounter between Mahalanobis and Nelson Annandale, the director of the Zoological Survey of India, during the 1920 Nagpur session of the Indian Science Congress. Intrigued by Mahalanobis' expertise, Annandale sought his assistance in analyzing anthropometric measurements of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta.